Salient Characteristics Redacted.doc

Salient Characteristics

Commercial Availability Certification:

I have evaluated the commercial marketplace and determined that all of the salient characteristics documented below are available in products/services offered in the commercial marketplace.

Signature (typed name): [REDACTED] Technical Point of Contact (TPOC) or Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR)

The Army Research Laboratory requires one (1) advance research atomic-layer deposition (ALD) system with remote inductively-coupled plasma (ICP) source and research-critical, add-on components.

The Contractor shall provide the following ALD and components:

150LX-B1-B9

The ALD System shall adhere to the following specifications:

1) An ultra-high purity environment in the process chamber is critical for [REDACTED] engineering a reliable, electrically active dielectric. Respectively, the chamber design must maintain very low contamination partial pressures (<1E-8T). Oxygen contamination should demonstrate <1% in plasma-enhanced ALD nitrides, including aluminum-nitride and titanium-nitride thin films (as measured by SIMs; prior published results will be considered.) The reactor should be of a single-wall, hot wall design of variable temperature. Gas introduction should be from the top of the reactor, through a radial showerhead design and must demonstrate laminar flow of precursors and reactants at the wafer surface. The reactor should include an inert gas curtain or similar method to minimize precurser interaction with chamber components and similarly use a gas diffusion barrier or similarly effective method to isolate contaminants from the sample loading area. The system shall include a high-vacuum load lock with base pressure <5E-07Torr.

2) The ALD system shall include a radio frequency (RF) inductively-coupled plasma (ICP) source with auto-matching network and demonstrate a stable plasma environment throughout an operating range of 50W-1000W. The environment must include closed-loop, variable residence mode of the gas species to control gas radical and ionic concentrations at the substrate surface. The plasma source should be shutterless and demonstrate <1second pulse times. A bypass channel should be used to ensure continuous flow of reactant gas during operation. Reactant gasses must be purified just prior to chamber entry and fed through a high-purity sapphire tube to the ICP source with gas flows capable to >100 standard cubic centimeters per minute (sccm), both with and without need for an inert carrier gas. The ALD system shall include a gas compatibility, programmable logic controller (PLC) to prevent mixing of incompatible gases.

3) A Si wafer surface must reach temperatures >500 degrees Celsius at a chamber pressure of 1Torr. Temperature variation should be measured to <+/-3% across a >125mm diameter. Contingent with this requirement, the chamber must reliably perform at these temperatures without long-term degradation. The chamber should include a substrate heater which demonstrates heating to at least 625C, without degradation to seals and ancillary chamber components.

4) An important aspect [REDACTED] relies on the ability to incorporate adlayers of certain atomic or molecular species. At times, these species may be toxic and require additional safety controls. The ALD system shall include a pulsed gas source delivery module for accurate, high-speed dosing of toxic gases without the need of a mass flow controller (MFC). The pulsed gas source delivery module shall include a separate channel for pumping and purging of input line components and on-board gas leak detection. Moreover, the ideal system should be designed such that gas cylinders can be more quickly moved in and out of the system for multiple experiments.

5) In order to preserve high-quality ALD films for further in-situ processing or film analysis and protect from environmental degradation, the ALD system shall be capable of seamless integration to an existing HV-ready and UHV-capable, Kurt J Lesker Octos cluster system currently in operation. The ALD system should integrate in a fully automated capacity with shared software functionality for use in clustered recipe operations. Additionally, the chamber shall be able to function independently of the cluster system, using the ALD system’s load lock.

The Contractor shall include shipping and deliver FOB destination to the following location no later than thirteen (13) Months After Contract Award (ACA):

U.S. Army Research laboratory

2800 Powder Mill Road

Adelphi, Maryland 20783

Contracting Officer:

Template last updated 01/8/2019